The official 2010 F1 teams list published today by the FIA has confirmed long-standing rumours the new Manor entry will be branded by former Brawn sponsors Virgin.

The FIA has also noted the absence of an entry from Toyota and has not yet substituted it with another team – including new BMW owners Sauber.

Toyota may have to pay a fine to the FIA for not entering next year despite having signed the Concorde Agreement. They may be able to avoid it if they arrange for someone to take over their team and run it in F1.

Zoran Stefanovic has been rumoured to be interested in taking over the outfit and using their TF110 designs for next season. He currently has a case against the FIA being heard by the European Commission about how the 2010 team entries were handled.

Meanwhile BMW, which does not have an entry for 2010 having refused to sign the Concorde Agreement and subsequently quit F1, has cancelled the sale of the team to Qadbak and sold it to Peter Sauber instead. That surely raises the prospect of it being on the grid next year.

Also of interest in the entry list is the confirmation the 1 Malaysia entry will be known as ‘Lotus’, despite having little in the way of ties to the historic Lotus team. Is it right that such a historic name is being used in this way?

The numbers have been allocated for the four new teams with Lotus getting the lowest pair and Virgin the highest.

Although the list reveals no new information about the driver line-up, it does show Bruno Senna is down as the ‘second’ Campos driver, which could be an indication the team is expecting to find a more experienced driver for the other seat to pair with the rookie.

As for Virgin, it’s surprising they’ve allowed the official news of their Manor deal to slip out in this fashion. Did they not want to make a proper announcement with all the publicity it would bring?

Does anyone know the explanation behind the attribution of the numbers?
All I know is the Driver’s Champion gets the #1, regardless if he changes team, and his teammate #2.
From this listing, it looks like #3 and #4 are given the to the Constructors Championship.

After the champions team gets 1 & 2, the rest of the numbers go in order of constructors’ positions from the previous year. Why Lotus got in ahead of the other 3 new teams when they were the last to be granted a place is beyond me though!

The FIA likely consulted with the teams as to which numbers they wanted. They have never let new teams in en masse before, and so there’s no real procedure for how to go about numbering them. Even if they asked Campos, Virgin and USF1 what nubmers they wanted before Lotus, Lotus would still get the 18 and 19 if noneof the other teams wanted them.

Numbers are awarded based on World Constructors’ Championship standings, with the obvious exception of the number one, which is carried by the World Champion.

Jenson Button has the rights to the number one, and so takes it with him to McLaren. As Mercedes won the 2009 WCC under the title of Brawn – and because they changed their name before the entry list was released – they get the rights to the three and four, the highest-placed numbers outside of the number one (and the two that goes with it).

As for the four new teams, it seems that the FIA has grouped them all togehter under one heading and simply assigned the nubmers, or at least consulted with the teams on what numbers they wanted (it seems Bruno Senna frequently races with the nubmer 21).

Why is that? They have the rights to the Lotus name, since Proton own the Lotus marque. It’s not as if they purchased the company purely for the sake of running a Formula One team with it; they’ve owned Lotus for years. The team has made it pretty clear that they’re not trying to be the Lotus of old, that they want to forge a new identity that runs parallel to the previous incarnation of Lotus. They want to add to the history of the name, not profit from it.

My understanding was that David Hunt (brother of James and then owner of the Team Lotus name) entered into a partnership with Pacific for reasons that are not entirely clear. Hunt was trying to revive Lotus as a going F1 team at the time and may have been trying to keep the brand name in the spotlight. But it wasn’t a case of Pacific buying the remains of the old Lotus team – I think Hunt still owns the Team Lotus name today.

If its a choice between Stefan GP and Sauber, surely Sauber should get the final slot? With teams having pulled out recently and the concern that not all the new outfits will make it to the 2010 grid, we need teams with good prospects and a chance of survival. I’d pin my hopes on Sauber over a Serbian-lead Toyota buyout.

That said, my personal preference would be to have the existing teams (make that Williams) agree to a 14th slot.

This will be determined by the legal obligations of the Concorde agreement, rather than by which is the most deserving team.

Toyota Motorsport has an F1 entry for 2010 – the Concorde agreement obliges whoever owns that entity to field a team. Presumably it also gives them a legal entitlement to the entry – so the FIA can’t unilaterally take it away from Toyota and give it to Sauber, who don’t have an entry because BMW failed to sign the Concorde agreement when they had the chance.

Sauber can either hope to be granted a 14th entry or arrange to buy Toyota’s. But Toyota has an entire team to offload and may not be willing to split the team from the entry – a team without an entry is almost worthless. This is where Stefan GP may well come in, given that they’re looking for an entry and a team.

If there’s any justice Sauber will get the nod over Stefan GP – but it may well be the legal situation that decides it.

Keith, note that the FIA’s entry list doesn’t mention Cosworth in relation to Campos, but states ‘Campos Dallara’ as constructor. However, since there are several tiny inconsistencies on the list — e.g. Lotus-Cosworth with hyphen and Force India Mercedes without — this may simply be an error.

I understand. I reckon you’ve got the right constructor name: ‘Campos-Cosworth’. It could be, however, that the team have entered as ‘Campos Dallara-Campos Dallara’, much like ‘Ferrari-Ferrari’, and ‘Renault-Renault’, and in fact have badged the Cosworth engines.

Although the list reveals no new information about the driver line-up, it does show Bruno Senna is down as the â€™secondâ€™ Campos driver, which could be an indication the team is expecting to find a more experienced driver for the other seat to pair with the rookie.

Keith, Bruno Senna doesn’t actually bring any sponsorship to the team. He makes it easier for them to find sponsors, but he doesn’t have to bring them in as a condition of his contact. Campos are currently looking at Vitaly Petrov and Pastor Maldonado as Senna’s team-mate, and both of them come with the might of Gazprom and PDVSA respectively. It’s likely that either of those companies will become the team’s title – or at least major – sponsor, and so that driver will be given the “lead” seat, though as both drivers would be rookies, it would be a fairly cosmetic move.

Also, Senna has run with the number 21 before. I think. This is because of his sponsor, telecom provider Embratel. Embratel’s international calling code is 21. I think it is more than conicidence that Senna will carry a number so closely associated with his sponsor. Especially since standard operating procedure for assigning numbers is to give the last numbers to the newest teams; by rights, Lotus would normally carry the 24 and 25 because they joined after the other three. But they’ve got the 18 and 19, so I suspect the FIA consulted the new teams as to which numbers they wanted.

I wonder if Peter Windsor requested the 22 in the hopes that its recent run of success will rub off on him and his team …

It will be interesting to see if Embratel get involved with Campos as a team sponsor. Vitaly Petrov comes with the backing of Gazprom, while Pastor Maldonado has PDVSA, but I think Maldonado may also have extra sponsors. Given that telephone companies are a major drawcard for sponsor dollars – AT&T, Vodafone, MegaFon, T-Mobile and possibly Orange all have been or possibly will be involved with the teams – one of Maldonado’s sponsors could well be a Venezuelan telecom conglomerate, which probably won’t sit well with Embratel.

Plus, I’ve ehard that Vitaly Petrov has already signed to join Campos. However, it was on the internet and it came from someone claiming to be a friend of his. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has played that card to try and make out that they know more than they really do, but they usually do it for the likes of Alonso or some other major driver move. But Petrov? He’s a newcomer. His name doesn’t have the weight the likes of the Alonsos or Buttons of this world. So maybe it’s true after all … or maybe I’m just more willing to believe it since I want to see im in Formula One.

Actually, it is. The FIA Technical Regulations clearly state the number 13 car has to paricipate with thirteen black cats strapped to the nosecone. Unfortunately all the current drivers are animal lovers (figuratively speaking) hence no number 13.

Racing drivers are too damned superstitious, sometimes to even be near the number! 13 has been my number since I started racing as a kid, but when I started in late models, the owner of the first track I raced at asked me to petition the other drivers to make sure they were OK with it!

Are Alonso and Hamilton inexpeirenced, by deifition? Of course not. Teams are not obligated to take one experienced and one inexereiced driver; if Schumacher wanted to join Mercedes, he wouldn’t have any issues about taking the number four. Driver numbers within a are generally assigned based on championship finishing positions, anyway.

On the number topic, what number car has won the most WDC’s? The number 5 has to be in with a shout. I seem to remember that Nigel Mansell (92), Michael Schumacher (94), Damon Hill (96) and Fernando Alonso (2005) all used 5 to win the WDC.